Bastard!! (review)

First up, biases on the table - I'm not an animé fan. Not by any stretch of the imagination. Ditto manga. The closest I'll get to either are certain French bandes dessinées and ElfQuest (which has manga influences, esp, the stuff from the late 1980s, early 1990s), but that's about it. I think there's something about the fandom that puts me right off, yano, people dressing up in Japanese schoolgirl outfits when they're I. male, and II. at least thrice the age of a Japanese schoolgirl, that sort of thing. So it was with great caution that I scored myself the animé series Bastard!!.

The plot? It's like the offspring of Heavy Metal (the 1981 film) and a bad martial arts film that doesn't take itself seriously in any way. It's set centuries after the fall of man, when the dark god Anslasax destroys modern civilisation and ushers in an age of blood, iron, bone, and sorcery, forcing humanity to subsist in a barren and bestial environment. In this world, the four Lords of Havoc set off on a conquest of the entire world, and come upon the kingdom of Metaricana, which they almost conquer, until Dark Schneider, the protagonist and bastard of the title, is reborn in ways too alarming to mention here ("seals of purity" are mentioned, that's all I'll say - that, and a spell called "Accept" after... yes, you get the idea). DS then happy-gallaghers around defeating various enemies who all brag of their indestructibility but who all get suitably pwned, usually with a snarky comment from DS. Needless to say, battles usually involve spell effects that are way too large, really big explosions, and flying around with lines buzzing past them at high speed. Not to mention announcing each move like "Hurricane Sword Ultimate Attack!!!!!" and so forth.

Then there's the characters. Man, DS is a bastard. I really mean that. He's utterly amoral, devilishly handsome, and insufferably arrogant. His motivation is, in his own words, "to slay every man in the world who could possibly rival me. And take their women." What's not to like? He's a lean, mean, Chaotic Evil arse-kicking machine, and his signature spell, Venom, melts people. Then there's the bit in the second episode where he carries the rather short-skirted Princess Sheelah up a ladder by the vagina - not that you actually see anything, but you get the idea. Women, men, or both, he treats everyone like absolute filth, yet people like him. But I think this makes sense, actually. I look at it like this. Imagine a game of Dungeons & Dragons in which your character is starting to get really, seriously, powerful. You'll notice that you don't move through the game world so much as the game world moves around you. Soon enough you're the only mage of high enough level in the entire world to be able to cast certain spells. Where's the need to treat people with respect or decorum when you can just pop a Power Word Kill in their ass if they annoy you? This is why Dark Schneider is, well, such a bastard.

The other characters are similar as well. Ninja Master Gaara has similar motivations, as well as having the truly legendary line, "who would be stupid enough to sneak into a Ninja Fortress through the front door?!" and who throws the heroine Yoko into a pit with clothes-eating slime. Thunder Empress Arshes Nei hams it up suitably with what looks like a grey one piece swimsuit that seems disturbingly like it's going to fall off at any moment, and in fact actually succeeds in killing off DS but he resurrects himself through force of will (and at this point she returns to warming his bed). It's almost like the creator of Bastard!! was trying to take the piss out himself...

...oh wait, he is, there's that bit where DS explains to King Di Amon that the latter is definitively going to be beaten because DS is the incredibly popular main character and Di Amon is just a two-bit walk on villain, and then there's the fourth wall breakings after a particularly overdone spell effect...

In many ways Bastard!! is the spiritual successor to the legendary 1981 animated film "Heavy Metal" in that it's a non-stop farrago of somewhat tongue-in-cheek action and with gratuitous nudity and suchlike. The only things that stop it from being such is that the bands that are name-dropped aren't in the sound track (more's the pity, that AMV of it to Kamelot's song "Karma" rules so hard that the band adopted it as a semi-official video to said song) and that the background isn't shaped like breasts and genitalia. In fact, what were they thinking with the soundtrack? What's this completely out of place J-pop tune doing over the end credits? Sense is not made by this...

So, yes, Bastard!! is well recommended, although hardened animé fans will probably not approve of it because it doesn't seem to be aimed at animé fans, rather, it seems to be aimed at everyone else. Yeah, go check it out. I think it's all on YouTube anyhow.